I have no time today for the complaints of non-unionized teachers or unionized baby thieves

ByMartyn Bradbury

I have no time today for the complaints of non-unionized teachers or unionized baby thieves.

Those teachers who refuse to join the union are bitching that despite them not supporting the Union in winning a huge pay rise and better working conditions for members, they want the same conditions the members will get at the same time.

Non-union teachers angry at three-month wait for pay rise

Non-union teachers are angry that they will have to wait three months to get the pay rises that the Government has offered to union members.

Ministry of Education deputy secretary Ellen MacGregor-Reid has confirmed that the proposed pay hikes would take effect from July 1 for union members, but not until three months later for teachers who don’t belong to the unions.

Union members, but not non-union members, would also get $1500 one-off payments on July 1.

…I don’t care about scabs. If you refuse to join the union but then benefit from the better conditions they negotiate, you are a scab. Union members should be rewarded for a better negotiated deal, these scabs are just lucky they will also benefit from the better pay and conditions. Screw them and their whining, the audacity of these scabs!

Then there is the PR campaign to convince everyone that the poor unionised baby thieves are feeling unsafe because of all the media attention on their deeply flawed and racist baby uplift policy…

Social workers tasked with uplifting babies in dangerous situations will be ‘shaking in their boots’

Social workers tasked with removing babies from unsafe situations, or others that have carried out uplifts in the past will be “shaking in their boots” says the head of the national social workers association.

Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers chief executive Lucy Sandford-Reed said the fallout of Oranga Tamariki’s attempted uplift of a baby from Hawke’s Bay Hospital last month had created a “sinister” example.

“I think every Oranga Tamariki social worker who’s ever done an uplift should be shaking in their shoes, because somebody somewhere who’s had an uplift in the past will see this and will see an opportunity to complain,” she said.

…Unbelievable- ‘people hating us for stealing babies makes us feel unsafe’ – ummmmm. Good!

This argument being pushed by some Unionist Left Comrades that we shouldn’t attack the poor unionised workers at Oranga Tamariki because they’re following orders &’ job security’ means jack shit to those in the gig economy.

Your job security to enact spiteful social policy means nothing to us.

The 2016 policy is deeply flawed. Using big data as a predictor it is punishing parents for future crimes, it stops parents using legal aid to fight uplifts, it uses secret evidence from a streamlined phone system that judges its success by the increased number of uplifts.

We know children in state care are more likely to be abused than if left with their parents.

We know that the independent oversight isn’t there and the Minister only signed off on some ideas that haven’t been implemented a year ago.

We know that the Ministry of Vulnerable Children was a simplistic neoliberal solution to the complexity of poverty and child abuse. Focusing on rescuing children from environments that big data predict are abusive rather than the wrap around services a whanau requires to keep their child is a cost cutting measure.

And unionised workers complying with this terribly flawed policy want a  fucking round of applause and a big card that reads ‘not all heroes wear capes’ do they?

How dare these people hold up the bodies of dead brown children to justify this spitefulness.

We all know that there are parents who should not have children because they are a danger, but that’s not what is happening here, we are seeing flawed streamlined conveyor belt styled policy that is utterly unaccountable to anyone.

That some staff are reflecting on the brutality of their actions and fearing accountability is the best thing I’ve heard all week.

 

 

 

 

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9 Comments

  1. +100 Good Post…the non-unionised should not get the gains made by those with the courage and sacrifice to be unionised

    …and shame on those unionised who have wrenched a new baby from its new Mother and separated them! …it is a crime against humanity

    …new Mothers need support and community, particularly if they are in danger

  2. There’s something goes wrong with humans when they are given power over other human beings. Maybe those who chose to be in the role of policing society are self selecting for the last people we would want to be in that role. This was the next article I looked at … https://www.rt.com/usa/462022-cops-threatened-kill-family-doll/
    It struck me that it is the same mentality in operation. The functionaries become a gang.
    D J S

    1. David Stone: “something goes wrong with humans when they are given power over other human beings.”

      It seems to me that the take-home lesson from history – most especially recent history – is that, given the right set of environmental conditions, we’re all capable of egregious behaviour towards other people. It is part of the human condition: we’re a groupish species, with all that that entails. It is societal mores and expectations and the rule of law that constrains us.

      With regard to Oranga Tamariki and the HB hospital case, it’s vitally important to remember that we do not have the full story. We know what has hit the headlines: it would be a mistake therefore to assume that we have a handle on what’s going on. See this:

      https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113569980/the-other-side-of-the-oranga-tamariki-baby-uplift-story

      “It struck me that it is the same mentality in operation. The functionaries become a gang.”

      I found the video of the attempted uplift a difficult watch, and – given the presence of cameras and the families’ challenge to the process – I think that some common sense could have prevailed earlier than it did. However: it doesn’t follow that the uplift attempt was the wrong thing: I don’t have enough information to be able to make that judgement; neither does anybody else commenting or posting here.

      We need to be very cautious about blaming OT staff for doing their job. It is a difficult one: none of us would have the stomach for it, I suspect. They don’t take only Maori babies, though it looks as if it’s disproportionately Maori babies. And nobody who’s read the awful child abuse stats and followed the news here over many, many years could be surprised at that.

      I’d add that, wrenching as it is to watch newborns being taken away, it’d be far, far worse in respect of older children.

  4. Agree with your point about ‘scabs’ Martyn, we don’t see those whinging about benefits to union members deciding to turn down the rises because the union achieved them! (that’s if the members vote for the latest offer). As they are anti-union, that would be the principled thing to do, surely? As for the issue of baby snatching, Beecroft is ensuring that will be examined carefully. But as one post has said already, government workers cannot reveal the problems as they see them. My father worked in Child Welfare and commented on sympathetic media coverage of a mother complaining her 13 year had been removed from her care. That was because her care had involved putting her daughter on the game – could not be publicly revealed ofcourse. Bomber, where is your evidence that children in care fare much worse than children in their families?

    1. There was research published in April I think about the numbers of children in OT care who had been abused.

    2. Janio – Stuff 19/6/19.

      “If there is a risk – and that assertion is questionable – the state made a significant contribution to that risk in the first place. The state can hardly take the high moral ground, particularly when over 200 children in their custody were abused in six months.”

      The information has been around for at least a year about the abuse of children in care. Little of it is straightforward, unfortunately.

      There are often high need, often disturbed kids,over-worked social workers, not enough social workers, sometimes insufficiently supported foster parents, and people doing it just for the money.

  5. Big data, pre-crime, I’m wondering what surveillance powers they have – presumably (like WINZ): police records, bank accounts, intimate pictures and phone records – medical records and Facebook chat even. We need to know this.

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